Paul Liberatore: Bolinas acoustic group This Old Earthquake gathering fans

Singer-songwriters Ethan Okamura (left) and Steve Trivelpiece, who formed their band This Old Earthquake with bassist Michael Burton in 2008, have released their debut album 'Portuguese Murder Ballads.'

That's not the name of a new genre in pop music - yet. But that's the way a growing cult of fans has been describing the sophisticated, back porch music of This Old Earthquake, an acoustic trio from Bolinas that has just released an inspired debut album, "Portuguese Murder Ballads."

Dennis McNally, the Grateful Dead historian and author, turned me on to them, saying in a note that accompanied their CD:

"As I suspect you know or can guess, my musical tastes don't run to 'alt.'" Most of what I listen to was recorded at least 50 years ago or more, but I ran into this CD and was seriously impressed. It's spare, dark, elegant and contemporary."

Yes, it is. And then some. I was as enthused as Dennis after listening to the album's nine original songs, tunes reminiscent of Chris Whitley and Bon Iver, Gillian Welch and Iron and Wine.

Childhood friends Ethan Okamura and Steve Trivelpiece, both singer-songwriter-guitarists, along with another boyhood pal, bassist Michael

Burton, formed the band in the summer of 2008, naming it after a line in "Sin City," a Gram Parsons song that goes, "This old earthquake's gonna leave me in the poor house."

They aren't afaid to take on weighty subjects like mental illness and death. The album's title comes from "Lisbon," an existential ballad about a young woman's body that washed up on a beach. "End of the Line" was inspired by a spate of young men in Bolinas who were suddenly stricken by bipolar disease. Two have since died. Okamura sang the bittersweet "Tsunami" at a memorial for his late father, Bolinas artist Arthur Okamura. And "Cemetery Street," written by Trivelpiece, is an ode to a girlfriend who passed away. "Birthday Card" is the only song from an outside writer, Grateful Dead lyricist Peter Monk.

Shortly after they got together, they were playing a private gig in the Peace Barn, the Bolinas landmark owned by Esprit clothing company founder Susie Tompkins Buell, when longtime Bonnie Raitt sound engineer Paul "Pappy" Middleton heard them.

"It just blew me away how straight to the heart their songs were," Middleton recalled in a soft Texas drawl. "Their songs are about things that they've been through that life throws at you. I gave Bonnie (Raitt) some of their tunes to listen to when she was going through some hard times in her life and they really worked for her."

Middleton was so moved by their haunting, evocative sound that he offered to record their first CD in his Palmyra Studios, a rustic recording facility known for its vintage gear in the rolling Texas countryside 25 miles south of Dallas.

There was a small hangup, though. These guys are in their 40s, and a couple of them have day jobs and families and responsibilities.

Trivelpiece, for instance, is the production manager of Hog Island Oyster Co. He and his wife, Rebecca, manager of Osteria Stellina in Point Reyes Station, have two young sons. They couldn't just drop everything and make a 3,600-mile round trip to Texas, even if it was the chance of a lifetime. That's where the good people of Bolinas came in.

Okamura's in-laws loaned them a van to drive, even fixing its air conditioning to help them weather the searing Texas heat. Once they arranged to get time off from work, their "community of friends" scheduled child care and packed a cooler with provisions to sustain them and save on meal money.

Once they got to Palmyra, they hunkered down in the studio, recording for five days, sleeping on the floor at night. They made a conscious decision not to clutter their sound with a drummer. Their only percussion were some spontaneous hand claps.

"What we wanted was sparseness and space in our sound, letting the music breathe," Okamura explained. "We want to hear the pick against the string, the way a consonant sounds in the microphone. We wanted to hear our breath. You can't get that with a rock band."

When they were done, Middleton pronounced "Portuguese Murder Ballads" "one of the best albums I've heard in many, many years."

"To me it was the perfect marriage of people wanting to put heart and soul into the music so that it will translate for years to come," he said. "And I think it will."